


Two Disasters, One Bomb

by Chet_Un_Gwan



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: M/M, Tim wishes new people would stop being employed, jacobi gets a new job!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 10:44:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21298169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chet_Un_Gwan/pseuds/Chet_Un_Gwan
Summary: It's not so much that Jacobi needs employment after everything went down on the Hephaestus, as it is that Jacobi could really use a solid distraction. And nothing says distraction like the end of the world.
Relationships: Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives/Daniel Jacobi (Wolf 359)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 122





	Two Disasters, One Bomb

**Author's Note:**

> Okay full disclosure I started this nearly a year ago, so we're just gonna ignore everything that got revealed after that. Not that this isn't canon compliant, it just avoids the question in general.

Jacobi is unclear how he got to this point. No, that’s a lie, Jacobi knows exactly how he got here. It’s the same way he’s ever gotten anywhere, really; he sees something new and thinks, well, I haven’t had any other bad ideas in awhile. It’s how he ended up everywhere that could have mattered and several other places besides. 

When he left the others, he had promised to take care of himself. Not because he actually thought that he was going to, but because Minkowski had apparently gotten too used to looking after the children that were her crew, and she made him promise. And then when he ended up in London of all places, drifting from hotel to hotel with various scams, she actually checked up on him and made him an appointment with a therapist in the area.

It may be the worst thing she ever did to Jacobi, and she shot his best friend.

Not that he’s keeping score or anything.

But he went to the appointment, because he's tired, and bored, and out of ideas. It was terrible, talking around everything that happened, making things up to steer the conversation away from pitfalls. And the therapist just sat there, too, saying "mmmhmm," and "I see," making sympathetic sounds and just letting him talk. Her fingers twitching to write down whatever he came up with next. 

When their session came to an end, she asked him if he wanted to schedule another and for a second he almost said yes. Like it was someone else’s idea rising through him. Like being back at Goddard, taking Kepler’s orders, before everything else fell apart. 

He said no. It was easy to shrug it off, to push back into the familiar spiral downward instead, and when he said no, she didn’t look surprised. Maybe she got the sense that this wasn’t someone who was looking to be fixed. Her parting piece of advice, before he left, was, “Listen, I know that you don’t want to talk about what you’ve been through. And you don’t have to talk to me about it. But maybe consider finding someone to talk to?”

Jacobi reared back defensively, but before he could say anything, she rushed to add, “Not even a therapist, if that’s something you’re really against. Anyone. A friend, maybe?”

She tacked the last bit on unconvincingly, as if she had seen past all of Jacobi’s evasion to what he hadn’t said. That he didn’t have any friends. That his only _friend_ was dead and gone. 

He left without another word.

But something must have stuck, Jacobi thinks to himself, because when he saw that ad in the paper, his first thought had been _Two birds, one stone_. 

And her words must have stick, because why else would he have sat here for over two hours, spilling out the entire events of the Hephaestus mission for some guy with odd scars and his laptop. 

Also, Jacobi thinks scathingly as he starts to wrap up his story, why does he have a tape recorder next to him if he’s just going to record it directly to a laptop. Hipster. Still, Jacobi can tell that his story is bugging the crap out of _Jonathon Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute_, so it’s by no means a total loss. 

“And that’s that,” Jacobi finishes. “We awkwardly crashed our way to Earth and probably went our separate ways. I know I did.”

“That’s uh. Great.” Sims’s expression does not say that this is great. If anything, his expression says _why did I let you give a statement_. “So eh, this is an institute for _supernatural_ occurrences. Apart from the. Aliens.” And he manages to make this word sound like it should be ashamed to have ever come from his mouth, “Did anything actually supernatural occur?”

Jacobi isn’t a total idiot. He knows that Sims doesn’t believe a word he said. That’s fine. That wasn’t the point. “Probably not, but at that point, who can really keep track.”

“Fine.” Sims is now messing around on his laptop, probably trying to transfer a several hour long audio file without it gumming up the works and stalling his laptop for ages. 

This is when Jacobi slides the newspaper article across the table. “I’m not done yet.”

Sims looks up, ready to be pissed that Jacobi isn’t already out of the building, probably, and then he sees the clipping. “What’s this?”

Jacobi grins. Oh yeah. Annoying people is definitely still worth it. “I’m also here about the job.”

“The _what_.” Sims looks weirdly scandalized for someone who hasn’t even read the clipping yet, or heard exactly what Jacobi is applying for.

“The demolitions job.” He’s still staring at Jacobi instead of reading the clipping, which. Is actually very satisfying. Since that means that Jacobi can take his time, winding him up. “There was an ad out, ‘Please apply at the Magnus Institute.’” Jacobi takes a moment to grin. “That’s me. Bombs guy.”

Sims just opens and closes his mouth a few times, bewildered, and Jacobi decides to throw him a bone. “It says to ask for Basira Hussain.”

——

Tim had just come in for the day, and was getting ready for a long day of hiding in the Archives, surrounded by books about creepy clowns, when he hears Jon shouting for Basira. He almost sounds scared, and for a second Tim wonders if he’s going to have to actually go over there to put in an appearance for another crisis. Then Martin rushes by the book shelves that Tim has wedged himself between, looking worried, and Tim relaxes as much as he is capable. If there is a problem, Martin can take care of it, and Tim can keep avoiding everyone. It had mostly worked up till now, after all.

Martin’s voice floats out from Jon’s office as he reaches it. “Jon what’s- oh. Who’s this? Is everything alright?” Tim can hear Martin’s jealousy picking its head up in his voice, and he considers finding a different place to do research. The last thing he needs is a front row seat to Martin fawning over Jon again.

Then: “He says he’s. He’s here for a _job_. Where’s Basira?”

Tim picks his head up at that, just as Basira walks around the corner and sees him. Somehow. She blinks twice, apparently just as confused at seeing him, and then asks, “What’s going on?”

“Some guy is here for a job, apparently.” Tim responds, shrugging. “God knows why.”

“Hm.” She heads for Jon’s office too.

Tim watches her go in, and hears an argument pick up almost immediately. Jon’s actually whining as he complains about bringing someone new in. Basira snaps out, “Oh, do your Archivist powers help you build bombs now, Jon?”, which isn’t encouraging, and Martin starts trying to leap to Jon’s defense while also agreeing with Basira, apparently. Tim grits his teeth and fiddles with his pen, thinking. He doesn’t _want_ to be on Jon’s side in any argument, but if they get another person trapped in this building with them, Tim might actually go and kill Elias right then and there. Melanie might approve, but it’s not exactly a great move long-term.

Basira resorts to actually shouting, and Tim gets up. If it’s gone this far as to break Basira’s insane amounts of calm, then it might just be worth breaking his self-imposed exile. Might as well see the source of all this chaos while he’s at it. As he opens the door and steps in, the argument suddenly stops. For a second, he thinks it’s him, thought he can’t fathom why he would be enough to get these idiots to veer off their one track. Then he sees the other guy in the room. Who appears to have just stood up.

The guy has burn scars creeping up his neck from his shoulder, and the hand on that side looks like a really good prosthetic. Maybe more; his jacket is covering his arm and Tim can’t get a great look. He looks like he’s been through hell and burned his way out.

“Okay, listen,” he says, “You guys have alluded to like, a dozen different weird horrors in five minutes. Which is wild, because I’ve never seen anyone so goddamn bad at keeping secrets. I’m not even sure that you’re trying; I’m kind of hoping that you’re not. Anyways, I’ll take the job. Do you guys have the supplies already or am I gonna have to make it myself?”

That’s enough to shut everyone up for a long second, all of them blinking owlishly except for Basira, who uses the moment to smooth her face back into neutral.

“_Why?_” Someone asks. Tim waits for the question to be elaborated on, before realizing that everyone has stopped staring at the guy and are now staring at him. Oops. He hadn’t meant to speak up.

“Okay, seriously?” the guys says. “How many of you are going to wander in and debate whether I should take a job that you guys literally put out an ad for? Is this discrimination?”

Tim whips his head around towards Basira. “You took out an ad?” He can feel his voice going low, anger building. Martin is fidgeting in the corner of his vision, his hands reaching out abortively to comfort. “What, tired of being trapped here with us? Wanted to drag someone else in?”

“Tim-“ Basira tries, but he’s already turning to face the new guy.

“You know that if you take a job here, you literally can’t leave? It say _that_ in the ad? You sign a contract, you’re here til you die. Oh, and by the fucking way,” he adds, probably looking more than a little deranged at this point, “Our boss is omniscient and we’re fighting literal nightmares! Welcome to the team!”

Tim makes eye contact, trying to stress the point, but as he does, something about the guy sends a sinking feeling through him. Like his warning isn’t just a little late, but late enough that it was like delivering mail to a gravestone.

“Great,” the guy says, “I’m Jacobi, nice to meet you. Where do I sign?”

——

Daniel Jacobi Don’t Call Me Daniel takes the job. Of course he does. When did Tim ever expect to accomplish anything here. When has he ever been able to save a single person. Jacobi takes the job, and begins burying himself in an unused office under wire and LED displays and C4. Tim avoids the office, just as he tries to avoid Melanie and Basira, bitter guilt welling up under the layer of exhaustion and anger that he carefully maintains.

Of course, he’s also avoiding Jon and Martin, paranoia creeping up his back every time he sees them, wondering if that really is the same face that he saw last time. Wondering if it’s the same voice, or if something has dug into his brain and created a blind spot, just big enough to lurk in. A monster hiding in plain sight. So, he’s spending a lot of time alone. It’s fine. It’s not like he’s going to survive this and have to deal with any long-term problems from isolating himself. It’s fine, for the relative meaning of the word.

So, long story short, but he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing, leaning on the door frame to Jacobi’s office.

He’s also not sure why Jacobi got an actual _office_, as opposed to just some desk, but looking around, it seems like he needs one. He already has wires and plastic bits scattered around the place, draped over the empty bookshelves and the one chair that he isn’t even using.

Jacobi is in fact sitting on the floor, dozens of pages of notebook paper lying around him. He keeps flipping through them, looking at one before scribbling on another, not just words but long lines and diagrams. Almost like art.

Tim is so tired. He wouldn’t be thinking in half-metaphors otherwise, wouldn’t be nearing this. Bad poetry is Martin’s job, not his.

He’s not sure how long he stands there before speaking.

——

Jacobi isn’t sure how long Tim Stoker Just Call Me Tim stands there before he speaks up. It could be quite awhile, he isn’t exactly paying attention. Bombs don’t design themselves. There’s a long stretch where he just kinda forgets that Tim is there.

And then Tim shifts, and something about how he moves is familiar. Not as in it’s someone Jacobi know, but as in, it’s something Jacobi’s done. Jacobi is suddenly acutely aware of Tim standing there, slouched. It’s as if he’s taking up more space than he it. Like he’s a presence he just can’t ignore. It is at this moment that Tim decides to speak.

Or more accurately, Tim decides to snarls exhaustedly from where he’s leaning against the frame. “You’re going to die at this job.”

“Could be worse.” Jacobi says, still mostly buried under his wiring plans.

“How?”

“I could _not_ die.”

Tim doesn’t respond, and when Jacobi looks up, he’s just watching, strange monumental presence gone, anger and exhaustion mixing on his face like a painting, or some shit like that. He’s not really good at metaphor, Jacobi thinks, Tim just looks tired and pissed off. Not at Jacobi, exactly. Just. In general.

It’s familiar.

“Wanna get a drink?” Jacobi asks.

Tim starts slightly from his position, betraying his surprise. “Aren’t you busy? With building a great big bomb?”

“Several bombs, actually,” Jacobi corrects, “and I’ve already done most of it. At this point I really need the floor plans that Melanie is getting. Can’t do much until then. So. You wanna get a drink?”

Tim doesn’t move for a few second, and Jacobi wonders idly if he has misjudged how to get him to blow off some steam. Maybe he’s more into knitting.

Then: “Sure. Why not.”

“Great!” Jacobi stands up and a mass of wires slide off the desk and onto the floor, making Tim wince. He grabs his jacket and heads for the door.

“By the way,” he says as he passes Tim, “My hotel room is surprisingly comfortable.”

Tim snorts. He takes a moment, and then follows him out.

——

Jacobi feels his back crash against his hotel door, and he starts scrambling for the handle, unable to turn to look without breaking the kiss with Tim. Tim, for his part, is kissing forcefully, near desperate, and doesn't seem overly concerned with getting caught out in the hall. It's an attitude that Jacobi could get behind, most days, but he's pretty sure that Tim would end up regretting it and besides, he's got intentions for that shitty bed. The handle appears under his hand finally, the cool metal turning with a click, and then they're following the swing of the door inside. Tim doesn't let up, mouth slipping down to Jacobi's neck, so it's up to Jacobi to kick the door closed and start moving them towards the bed. 

They fall down onto it, Jacobi landing on top. For a second he pauses to look at Tim and he asks, "Having fun?" He knows that there’s sarcasm bubbling up in his words, but truth be told he just isn’t sure how to cut that out.

“Time of my life,” Tim snarks back, so at least they’re on the same page. Jacobi leans down to kiss him again, and they cling to each other. Like there’s nothing else left. For a long time, they just do that, the former urgency shifting into sustained movement. They rock into each other, finding a sustainable rhythm.

Eventually, Tim's hands start moving faster, his movements leaning right into desperate. When Jacobi pulls back to catch his fingers, they're shaking slightly. "Tim?" he asks. "You okay there?"

Tim bares his teeth in some faint semblance of a grin. "I'm fine. Just fucking dandy. Get your shirt off."

For a second, Jacobi thinks about saying no. Of pointing out that Tim's in a breakdown, that he'll regret this later, that this isn't what he's after. Jacobi should know, of all people, what it feels like to be desperately angry and afraid, looking for a distraction. But if there's one thing that he's not, it's a hypocrite, and if he can't make nice choices than he has no place telling Tim to. So he pulls off his shirt and pushes Tim down onto the bed.

If Tim ends up drawing blood with his nails, neither of them mention it in the morning.

——

It takes two cups of coffee and an energy drink to get Jacobi to the Institute in the morning, though considering how hellishly early it is, calling it night still might be more accurate.

Jacobi gets a text from Basira around 3 or 4 am. Apparently Melanie had done some snooping around whatever building has blueprints around here, and Basira had been able to go in and lie her way into getting a copy. The details of the operation are lost on Jacobi, who reads this text from bed, trying to keep the light of the phone from waking up Tim. By the time he wakes up enough to process anything in more detail, he’s already hauling himself out of bed to get to the Institute, because he at least understood “We got the blueprints” while half asleep.

He taps Tim a couple of times to see if he’s awake, but no. Tim is dead to the world, and honestly, he could probably use the sleep. Jacobi thinks about leaving a note, but it’s a level of investment that he’s unwilling to take the first step towards. It’s fine, anyways. Basira can probably let him know what came up.

Jacobi sweeps out the door and begins his walk through the cold, predawn streets.

——

Tim needs to stop watching Jacobi. There are a few reasons for this.

First, it’s probably exactly what Elias wants and that alone is reason to stop. Second, it’s _weird_, and Tim is not used to things being weird after sex. He’s not afraid of saying it, he sleeps around a bit, and he enjoys it. He’s good at making things not weird. And even if the other person is upset about things turning out, it never manages to shake Tim. It’s never weird for _him_.

This is weird for him.

Jacobi has been tucked in his office with the bombs since apparently 4 am, when Basira texted him to let him know that she had found the blueprints. Because, also apparently, neither of those two actually ever sleep. It is now 2 pm, and if Jacobi has eaten then all he’s had is whatever bags of crisps were stashed in a drawer somewhere, because he has yet to leave the office and no one else has gone it.

Tim has spent the last twenty minutes staring at the same useless page, wondering how Jacobi hasn’t dropped dead long ago, and hating that he’s wondering that. He’s not stupid. He’s watched Martin carry around enough tea to know what caring looks like. This isn’t some obscure beating of his heart that he’s never felt before either, he’s dated and cared and fallen in love. It’s just, everything has gone wrong. Monsters are real and hunting him, he’s trapped by an eldritch horror. He doesn’t plan on getting out of this war alive. This is hardly the time to develop feelings for the only person who might be just as determined as he is to die here.

Through the cracked office door, Tim sees Jacobi unbend from the wiring he’s tinkering with just long enough to grab a new handful of metal bits, and then he folds back up over the bomb. His fingers weave in and out, connecting and joining. Tim has no idea what Jacobi is doing, per se, but it’s beautiful. He’s so purposeful at it, as if this is the only thing he’s good at and to hell with the rest of the world.

Tim shakes himself, looks back down at the page. It’s a useless jumble of words, something about the literary analysis of humor, with only the vaguest connection to clowns or circuses. He’s been trying to read it all day, and maybe, he thinks, if he had chosen something less dense, he’d be more focused on his actual task. Probably not, though.

Fine. It’s whatever. Tim slams the book closed and tucks it into the bookshelf, out of place, his own little rebellion. He hasn’t had any lunch, and if he stays here mulling over whether Jacobi’s inability to function makes him more or less likely to be a double, he’ll just snap. It’s been too long and he’s tired and he wants to stop thinking about it.

Lunch is a good enough distraction.

He slips out of the Archives without too much trouble, dodging the others and staying unseen. Mostly. Elias is probably watching, so Tim randomly flips off a blank wall on the off chance that he catches it. But the important thing is that no one tries to talk to him, or calls his name and that’s close enough to escaping. Even if there’s still some invisible leash tying him to that fucking building. Even if there’s no such thing as escaping anymore.

He wanders down to a sandwich shop, where he spends a few minutes wondering if Jacobi has a favorite sandwich. More thoughts he didn’t want to have today. He buys himself one, and then on what he wants to call a whim but is more accurately called inevitable, he buys a second of the same type. Ham and cheese can’t be hated, at least.

Tim eats his sandwich in the shop. He’s taken to stretching out his time away from the Institute as long as he can. Not enough to actually get sick, since that would take a few days and also be really uncomfortable, but enough that anyone watching would be able to tell that he’s doing it on purpose. Better than a union, at least in this case. Not like he can get fired.

After he finishes the sandwich, he sits for awhile, staring at the table, staring at his phone, trying to avoid doing any thinking at all. It’s harder than he expected, maybe harder than it used to be.

And so goddamn boring. When Tim winds up examining his fingernails for the second time and starts getting looks from the person at the counter, he decides that his point has probably been made. It’s at least well past when a normal lunch break would end.

He leaves the shop and goes back, the second sandwich tucked under his jacket. It’s a long enough walk that Tim can take his mind off what he’s doing, long enough that he doesn’t have to think. He only wanders back out of his head when he’s pushing open the back door to the Institute and slipping into the stacks of books. He doesn’t want to think about why he has a second sandwich. He doesn’t want to think about how he knows exactly why he has a second sandwich.

Jacobi hasn’t moved from his hunched position. Probably still hasn’t eaten.

Tim drops the sandwich on his desk and walks away, ignoring Jacobi blinking up after him, startled.

——

At some point, Jacobi starts getting the pieces put together. No one really sits down and helps him trace them out, everyone seems to prefer dropping cryptic warnings and then swanning off again in a fit of drama. It’s not a bad way to deliver news; Jacobi just wishes they weren’t _all_ like that.

Ironically, it’s one of the most obscure and dramatic warnings that end up giving him the most information.

He’s in his nice office with a door that closes and plenty of space to put wires and screws down and then forget about them, when said door opens and a very professional looking man walks in. He’s smirking faintly. Jacobi hates him on principal.

“Good morning, Daniel,” he says, because apparently neither going to space nor to a different continent is enough to get him away from bosses who insist on using his first name in a transparent ploy to make him uncomfortable. He’s reluctantly willing to hand it to Cutter; the bastard knew it was transparent and did it anyways out of love of the game. This guy, who he’s guessing is the rumored Elias, has earned no such caveats.

Jacobi doesn’t acknowledge him. The building has always given him a creepy sense of being seen, always a bad feeling for a special ops guy, and with this man in the room the feeling has been turned up to one hundred. Jacobi is dealing with it like he deals with everything. Piss it off until it makes a move and reveals itself.

The man, probably Elias, doesn’t wait for him to respond. “I had been wondering when I might get a chance to have a chat with our latest employee. I believe you signed all the right paperwork, but I feel I should take the time to welcome you aboard personally.”

Jacobi wonders where everyone went to. The room outside sounds empty and he has a hard time believing that Elias could walk around down here with everyone around and not get stuff thrown at him.

“How have you been settling in?” Elias finally directs a question at him, leveling his gaze in what seems like an intimidation attempt.

Jacobi really didn’t expect for it to work. Or really, it didn’t, he’s not intimidated by this guy in a wool suit who’s way too self-assured for someone who would be ripped apart by the other bosses Jacobi has had. But there’s something about that stare that just burrows under his skin and lodges there. It’s unsettlingly. Like that creepy feeling that the archives seem to carry, but distilled.

For a moment, just a heartbeat, in his mind Jacobi quails. And then he remembers the first warning he got. What was it that Tim said? _Our boss is literally omniscient_? Jacobi had forgotten in the time since, but that watched feeling drags on his nerves and he remembers. Huh. That’s not as bad as it could be.

The thoughts all race through his mind quickly, a scramble to make sense of what’s going on. And then he tucks them away, tied back by that old rule, _don’t ask any questions_, and he looks up at Elias and says_, “_Oh, you know how it goes. Moving my stuff in. Making friends. Same old, same old.”

It might be wishful thinking, but Elias looks like he might be annoyed by that. “I’m glad to hear that everything is going so smoothly. Do let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I’ll be. Keeping an eye out for you.” And with that ominous pause, he sweeps away again.

Jacobi leans back, fingers letting go of the wire twist he had been working on. While Elias had said literally nothing of value, his whole watching thing had definitely not been subtle. It fit a _theme_, which fine, whatever. A theme couldn't hurt generally anyone. But Cutter used to have a theme, all that playful menace, and Kepler had-. And Kepler used to have a theme. His stories. His rules. That veneer of not being a person which he had only ever broken at the very end.

Elias has a theme like that. An image. And yeah, an aesthetic on its own isn't gonna hurt, but Jacobi had yet to meet anyone nice who works to project a certain kind of menace. Add to that Tim's bizarre warnings, and everything starts looking worrying. Again.

Okay, Jacobi think. I can work with this.

——

Jacobi goes to find Tim. Sure, there are other people here, many of whom would be happy to piss off Elias by telling him what’s going on. But Tim might tell Jacobi things because he wants him to know, and that’s a subtle difference but it’s important. After so long of Kepler telling him nothing, he sort of wants someone to care enough to tell him things.

It takes awhile to find Tim. No one seems to know where he is, and Melanie is convinced that he just doesn't really come in anymore. Basira tells him that Tim's probably around here somewhere, but that's no help. And when Jacobi opens up the door to Jon's office, he jumps about a foot in the air.

"What are- I'm reading a statement, can this wait?"

"Hey boss, just got a quick question."

Jon looks frazzled, and also weirdly dangerous. Hungry? It's an odd look for someone who is currently shrinking in on himself. "What is it."

"Do'ya know where Tim is? No one else seems to agree on whether he's here today or not."

"Ah." Jon's eyes shift to the recorder in his desk, clicking faintly, and then back to Jacobi. "You might try waiting around a bit. He might turn up later."

Jacobi gives a nod. "Cool, thanks." He makes sure to shut the office door behind him on the way out. So, recorders and eyes and watching. Your own typical surveillance state.

No wonder Tim goes to such lengths to hide. Jacobi turns towards the depths of the Archives, all the records and books, and starts walking. Might as well search while he waits. 

——

It's getting to be late when he finally stumbles across Tim. Or at least, late by his measure; he's pretty aware that it's been late by everyone else's for awhile. Night has solidly fallen, at least, and had been fallen for awhile.

It's late, is the point, when he walks past a section of shelving that he's already looked through and he sees that the books have been moved to create an alcove. Jacobi peeks in and there is Tim, settling in and just opening a book.

"Hey bud," Jacobi says, startling Tim, who jerks his head up and hits it on the shelf. Ha. Tall people problems. "I was looking for you."

"Oh yeah?" Tim says, suspicion dripping off his voice. 

"Yeah,” Jacobi replies, smiling. Tim’s unending bad mood is surprisingly fun. “I had a weird conversation with a guy in a nice suit. Now, I'm used to weird conversations with guys in nice suits. I've had lots of those conversations. They're always kinda threatening, always kinda obscure. I think there's actually something in the suit that prevents clear communication, I’ve got a working theory about wool blends and sentence structure. But I wasn't expecting to have these conversations any more, so I have some questions for you."

Tim either relaxes slightly at that, or tenses up more. It’s hard to tell, his body language is all over the place. Jacobi wonders if he’ll even out after a few near-death experiences or if this is just what stress will always look like on him.

“Did this guy in a nice suit make you feel. Watched?”

“You know what,” Jacobi responds, suspicions confirmed, “He absolutely did. That wouldn’t have anything to do with your little warning from earlier, would it?”

Tim leans back, book spread in his lap, and stares at the ceiling. “If you didn’t believe me before, why would you now?”

“What you mean?” Jacobi asks.

“I warned you before. I told you that this place is a trap, that there are fucking monsters all over. You signed up anyways.”

“Oh.” Says Jacobi. “That. Yeah, I didn’t think you were lying. I guess delusional was a possibility, but it wasn’t super likely since everyone else seemed to agree with you. And I’ve seen some weird stuff, eldritch monstrosities aren’t too far out there.”

Tim sits up, stare at him. Jacobi starts wondering what he’s said that would prompt a reaction like that; he didn’t specifically say aliens, that should have been vague enough to be keep the topic of conversation away from him.

“Are you telling me that you believed me and joined up anyways?”

Jacobi is suddenly aware that he is teetering on the edge of a very different pit than he was anticipating to be stumbling across. No danger of being pitied here, but he’s hardly safe.

"Yeesssss?"

Tim _glares_ at him, suddenly radiating anger. He always radiates anger, but this time it's at Jacobi. Which is new. "What the fuck were you thinking?"

Jacobi feels the shift in the air and he doesn’t like it. "Fuck off man, what are you angry about? At least I'm here helping. What are you doing, buried up to your neck in books you know aren’t gonna help?”

“What the fuck do you know, man? You only just got here, and contrary to your little belief that you’ve seen some shit, you have no idea what you’re in for! If you think some bombs make up for the living nightmares that I’ve been through, you’re lying to yourself.”

A shock of heat bolts through Jacobi’s veins, anger mixing with adrenaline. Jacobi has felt the feeling currently overtaking him before, and he is well aware that it isn’t a helpful feeling. It demands that he prove Tim wrong, that he bares his own scars and if they don’t beat Tim’s, to inflict on himself a few more. He knows that this isn’t the right response. It is the exact opposite of what he wanted five minutes ago. He knows it.

“Living nightmare, my ass,” he spits, “I went to space. I went to space where I watched _super aliens_ possess people and cut off people’s hands. I got _mind controlled _by _my boss_. You get back to me when you get a spike shoved in your neck and you have to be cheerful and cooperative the whole time. I was paraded around like a goddamn doll. My best friend _died_. You haven’t even been through the worst part of this little drama, you haven’t seen anything. Fuck you and your living nightmare.”

Tim’s face doesn’t change, but Jacobi can already feel the regret working through him. Words that he should never had let out echoing between them. He hadn’t even gotten into this when he gave his statement, had glossed over the hard parts. But the words are out now, and for what. Some kind of trauma pissing contest?

Jacobi turns on his heel and leaves.

——

Tim is left sitting in his corner of the Archives as he watches Jacobi leave. How could- how _dare_ he. How dare he come here and dig Tim out of his hiding place, drop this on him and run off again. How dare he just say, yeah, I believed you, you said everything right to keep me away, and I decided to stick around anyways. How-

Tim cuts off his own thoughts by diving after Jacobi.

They go hurdling down the hallway, Jacobi only speeding up when he realizes Tim is coming after him, and Tim going full tilt. Jacobi pushes through a door and Tim follows him to find a bare concrete hall, some connecting passage between two parts of the Archive. Jacobi apparently had not been rushing, because as soon as Tim shoves his way in, he collides with Jacobi.

They go crashing down the wall to the floor, limbs flying, Jacobi’s nose caught by one and starting to bleed. Jacobi ends up slumped near sitting against the wall, Tim braced over him.

“Why,” Tim snarls, grabbing at Jacobi’s arm and trying to hold it down, “Why won’t you just stop, why would you take this job, be caught by this place, if you believed me, why did you stay?”

Jacobi grins up at him, blood dripping onto his lips, into his mouth. “You don’t know me, Tim. You don’t get to wander up and start trying to keep me safe, you don’t get to try and save me. That’s not how this works.”

Under Tim’s hand, Jacobi twists his wrist, slowly, pressing up into it. “I don’t _save_.” He says.

Tim stares down, and feels something he hasn’t for a very long time. For the last year, longer, Tim has been thinking about how he’s going to lose. The others are near useless, their enemy so terrible; Tim has accepted that he is going to die fighting this.

This is a loss on an entirely different scale. This isn’t a war against an unimaginable monster, or the fear of a stranger emerging from a familiar face. It’s not even watching his brother’s skin be puppeted around. It’s unbearably mundane and all the more painful for it.

He is angry, Tim realizes, and somehow has only just noticed. He tightens his hands on Jacobi’s wrist, which keeps pressing back. Not trying to get free, just increasing the pressure. Tim is angry. There are so many unbelievable monsters, larger than life, and Jacobi is going to end up dead just because he wants to. He heard Tim describe a terror and immediately threw himself into. Everyone else is caught up, captured, pinned into this horrible story and Jacobi just showed up to die and he could have done that anywhere.

It’s maybe that last thought that causes him to loosen his grip. Jacobi could have crawled off anywhere to die and by pure chance he showed up here. By pure chance, they are going to die together. Time leans down and kisses Jacobi. It must feel gentle, the slow movements, but Tim tastes the blood coating his lips and he hasn’t stopped being angry. Jacobi startles slightly at his hand slipping free, and then leans up into the kiss, fiercer, more forceful. Tim slows down further. He eases down, right hand to the ground and left slipping down to Jacobi’s head. He deepens the kiss and as Jacobi tries to urge him on, he maintains the pace.

Tim feels his anger still burning and it mixes with grief. Jacobi could have come anywhere, and he came here and now. Any other time, and Tim could have helped. Could have tried at least, to save him. Could have done literally anything else besides die alongside.

But then, he wouldn’t have come, any other time. It’s because everything is so monumentally screwed that he’s here. Tim feels Jacobi’s teeth on his lip, and he kisses back, knowing that it won’t work.

——

Things start bleeding together after that.

——

Jacobi pushes Tim into a wall after working on the bombs for twenty four hours, and they make out messily there for a few minutes. When Tim reaches out to drag him closer, Jacobi slips away back to the office, where he works for another three hours and then passes out.

Tim goes home. There’s no saving some people.

——

One day, Tim just doesn’t leave the Archive, and Jacobi goes to dig him out. He might not have noticed, but Jon has apparently been trying to keep an eye on everyone, and had popped by asking if Jacobi knew where Tim was. He had told Jon no, and then headed out to go find him.

When Jacobi finds him buried in his stack of useless research, Tim’s asleep and twitching. Some kind of nightmare racing through his mind and his fingers. Jacobi shakes him awake, ignoring how Tim jumps, and drags him outside.

“Go away,” Tim mumbles, winching in the bright air.

“No.” Jacobi says. “Come back to my room.”

When they get there, get inside and Jacobi locks the door behind them, locks out the nightmares and the monsters, Tim kisses him again, pulling him close. This time Jacobi goes with it, pressing inward.

He bares his teeth against Tim’s neck, feeling the life flowing in the both of them. Tim’s fingers grasp at his shoulder blades, and Jacobi makes a concentrated effort to not bite down. No seek out that invisible leash that Tim hates so much and rip it out. He opens his mouth instead, pulls his teeth back. Kisses up and down the length of Tim’s neck. Tim gasps, breath going in, and sighs, breath going out. There’s so much life in him, and Jacobi burning under his skin with rage, that someone who wants to live so badly is _here_, facing this war. That Tim wants to live, and he’s ended up embracing dying for this like there’s no other option. Like he wouldn’t even take another option if offered.

Jacobi _hates_ it. Tim’s hands move up, cupping Jacobi’s neck, pulling him up so that they’re kissing. Jacobi does his best to be gentle, clumsy with lack of familiarity. Their kiss moves slowly, each feeling their way along. It stretches and Jacobi can feel it building, his muscles tightening until he snaps.

He pulls Tim off the wall and steers them towards the bed, pushes him down. Tim reaches up, hands, eyes, seeking contact, and Jacobi ducks under to pull his shirt up and kiss along his chest. Tim tries to pull off his shirt, hands clumsy with sleep deprivation, and Jacobi pauses to help him. It’s more of a trial than it should be. Tim is near falling asleep anyways, and he slows every time that Jacobi does.

Eventually, Jacobi just pulls him close, stops moving. Within a few minutes, Tim’s breathing evens out and he’s asleep.

Jacobi holds him through the night, not moving. Not waking him up. There’s just no saving some people.

——

They're in a kind of limbo now, circling each other around the pit where they're both going to fall. Jacobi knows that Tim is trying to convince him to walk away. Jacobi knows that he won't, that there's no way he walks away from an opportunity like this. In turn, though, he tries to find a way out for Tim. Tim, who's being dragged down and doesn't even want to be. Who doesn’t want to die and won’t consider another option.

It's familiar, painfully so. Orbiting this pit, though at least this time his dance partner is another satellite instead of the darkness at the center. At least it's someone else subject to these laws of motion and not the laws themselves.

They circle the pit together, and everything is held in perfect decaying orbit. And when things change, they change all at once.

——

The day of the ritual comes, and Jacobi is struck again by just how much these people _have not done this before._ Jon twitches the entire car ride there, and they all keep giving nervous looks to the set of bombs when Jacobi unloads them. It’s enough to almost make him anxious by proxy.

“Okay, fuck off,” he says, when Jon nearly drops one of the packages. “All you have to do is get that one bomb to that one location on the map. Calm the fuck down.”

Jon looks up. “Just the one?”

“Yeah, I’m not about to hand you two of those things. Basira, you take two, Tim takes two, I’ll take three. No one drop anything.”

Tim looks hesitant as he picks up his two packages. “Will they go off if I do?”

“No,” Jacobi snaps. “But you might break the wiring and then it won’t go off at all. Personally, I know which I’d prefer.”

Tim rolls his eyes, but the fear is dampened and they all take the bombs without nearly as much flinching. Jacobi is glad that his ability to lie has improved in the last year or so.

They head into the building, plan firmly in place.

——

The plan goes wrong way too fast.

First of all, there is a huge room under the museum that definitely wasn’t on the blueprints. Thank god Jacobi is good at his fucking job, because he’s able to rework where the bombs need to go on the spot, without them having to go into the room. Which is good, because it’s full of fucking monsters. He makes sure to tell them all this, repeatedly, until Basira tells him to shut the fuck up and point on the map where they have to go.

Second of all, when Jacobi is placing the last charge with Tim’s help, they’re spotted. In his own defense, Jacobi thinks, it wasn’t like there was any way to hide while setting the charge. It had to be placed on the ceiling of the third to last room, and Tim kinda had to hold Jacobi up while he placed it. So when the weird mannequin things walk into the room, yeah, they don’t exactly hide, okay? It’s not like Jacobi can just drop the bomb.

“Don’t you fucking dare drop me!” He yells at Tim, who looks like he’s going to go for his axe at any second.

“Hurry up, they’re getting closer,” Tim growls back.

Jacobi fiddles with the wires, fingers flying, and then slap the ducktape over the bomb, securing it. “Got it!”

Tim literally drops him to dive for his axe, Jacobi hitting the ground with a crack. “_Fuck!_”

Tim takes out the first mannequin with a blow and then goes to charge the next. Jacobi grabs the sleeve of his shirt. “Tim, stop, we gotta run!” Tim hesitates for a second, then follows Jacobi out the other door.

They race down the hall, trying to reach the exit. For a second, Jacobi thinks that they’re gonna make it, and then the last door between them and the exit crashes open as a dozen mannequin things pour out of it. Tim and him halt in their tracks, and then turn down the hallway next to them as both groups of monster collide in their pursuit. Jacobi has resigned himself to running forever, but Tim apparently remembers the floor plan at least a little. He pulls Jacobi into one of the rooms they pass and slams the door shut behind them, locking it.

The room is almost completely empty, a table and a few folded up folding chairs. Jacobi shoves the table against the door, and he hears the thud of several plastic bodies hitting the wood of the door.

“This was your plan?” He asks Tim incredulously.

“Well, we couldn’t just have run forever!” Tim snaps back.

The pounding on the door just keeps increasing in noise, and the door itself is shuddering. Quietly, Tim ask, “Do you think the others got out?”

_Who the fuck knows_, Jacobi thinks. “Yeah,” he says aloud. “Probably. We just got caught by bad luck. They’re probably fine.”

“So you think they’ve planted the charges by now?”

Jacobi turns sharply to look at Tim, who has a thoughtful expression. Jacobi realizes suddenly that this isn’t a question asked for comfort. It’s for strategy.

“Like I said,” Jacobi says slowly, “probably. We should wait until the last second to make sure.”

Their eyes meet. Tim nods, and takes up position by the door, axe raised. Jacobi starts trying to fortify the door with the folding chairs. They don’t exactly help when the door is being pretty literally ripped apart. Jacobi stands back, and starts checking on the detonator. Making sure nothing got jostled loose while they were running.

As he checks, he hears Tim say, “We’re almost there!”

Jacobi looks up, finger poised above the red button that he included just for the dramatics of the moment. The mannequin things have almost gotten the door down, and Tim is hacking at any limbs that make it through with his axe.

It’s ridiculously sexy, and Jacobi thinks, wildly, just for a heartbeat, _God, I hope we both get out of here alive._

Then he’s pressing the button and everything goes loud and bright.

——

Jacobi makes his way back to his hotel room. He nearly falls over in the street a dozen times, the blast still ringing in his ears. It’s a long walk. Especially alone.

Jacobi makes it anyways.

He had dug himself out of the rubble after the blast, shifting debris in a method he developed himself, a long time ago, trial and error, one job after another. When he came out, it was on the far end of the building, toward a street he hadn’t noticed before. When he dragged himself into the shadows, he huddled there for a little while, trying to get his thoughts straight.

After a time, voices started coming from the ruined building. First, Jon, doing a roll call, trying to find people. Basira answered first. Then Daisy. Jacobi didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Tim’s voice came, raspy and giddy.

Jacobi relaxed against the brick behind him, then startled up when Jon called his name next.

“Jacobi? Jacobi, are you there?”

Tim spoke. “We were in the same room, I think I saw him,” and then they were all calling, all of them, calling his name like he’d respond, like they wanted him to respond. _Jacobi, Jacobi_, Tim even throwing in a _Daniel_as if that was going to work better. There was fear in their voices, and Jacobi curled tighter around himself, trying to shut it out and convince himself that it didn’t matter. That it doesn’t matter. Eventually, their search wandered towards the further side of the bombed-out building, and Jacobi slipped away.

He gets home. He gets to the hotel room, the hotel room just like the ones he used to share with Kepler and Maxwell, the impersonal beds all looking the same. Except that it doesn’t quite look the same, because the bag he has isn’t full of Maxwell’s cloths too, and there’s no laptop on the desk and no flask of whiskey tucked in a corner. It doesn’t look the same, because that’s Tim’s shirt strewn over the chair, and since when did Jacobi have enough of a place for Tim to start leaving things there.

Jacobi shuts his eyes against the sight, against the implications of it. He is not a good person. He knows this, like he knows that water is wet and the sky is black and dotted with stars. But he doesn’t have to be worse than he is.

He digs out a bottle of something and deletes Tim’s number off his phone.

——

It’s 4 am and Jacobi is trying really really hard to not go over to Tim’s apartment for sex that’s going to end up meaning something. This mean, of course, that he’s staring at a bottle of vodka trying to figure out if being drunk is going to make that harder or easier. The phone rings, and Jacobi nearly breaks the bottle.

For a long moment, he thinks he’s hallucinated the first ring out of some unfathomable loneliness, and that he’s finally cracked, and then it rings again like it’s telling him to chill.

Jacobi stares at it, and as it keeps buzzing, reaches out slowly like it’s a venomous snake. Except not really, because he’s already made up a metaphor for it, and because Jacobi has actually grabbed at venomous snakes before and that’s why Kepler has- _had_, a standing ban on him interacting with wildlife. Maxwell had-

Jacobi shuts down this train of thought with all the practice of someone who hasn’t actually been doing this for a long time, and hits accept on his phone, putting it to his ear. And then he is more than sufficiently distracted, because whatever voice he was expecting, this wasn’t it.

“Why are you blowing up random buildings in London?” Lovelace asks.

Maybe anyone else would be slowed down by the surprise, but Jacobi has sarcastic quips in his blood. “It was date night and I ran out of ideas.”

“The sad thing is that might actually be true. Who’s your date?”

“Evil mannequins and a nice pretty boy in a bad situation,” he says.

“I hope you’re not talking about yourself.”

He laughs, half choked, and says, “I wouldn’t call myself nice, and you know that.” It says something about what they know about each other that she doesn’t react to his laugh.

“Of course,” she says instead, and there’s a beat in the conversation where Jacobi can feel her wanting to press for more information. To get a full handle on the situation, to take command. He almost wants her to. He could tell her all about the monsters under the bed that keep crawling out, complain about how this bullshit is too far out of his wheelhouse for someone who had to deal with aliens. He could tell her about Tim and finally have someone else tell him that it’d be better if Jacobi never saw him again.

She doesn’t ask. And Jacobi doesn’t offer. It’s close, so close to being an option for them, but they both know the wrong things about each other and know the holes in each other’s lives. They’re too afraid of filling the roles left empty.

Lovelace clears her throat. “You looking for something to do, or are those London buildings keeping you plenty busy?”

“It was only the one London building,” he protests halfheartedly. “You got any kind of job lined up?”

“What about helping me take out Goddard?” she asks.

Jacobi pauses, not sure he heard her right. “I thought you told me that it was in our best interest to lay low?”

“It was. Now we can act.”

Jacobi grits his teeth. No matter how carefully they dance around each other, there’s always a fuck up. He’s used to it being him. “You could. Have told me.”

Lovelace, uncharacteristically, hesitates, guiltily. “I’m. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure when the best time to act would be, or if I’d need your help. I didn’t want to leave you hanging or,” she hesitates again, “Or mess up your odds of settling down.”

Jacobi closes his eyes, feels the resentment boiling up in his chest, and then carefully sets that aside. One more for the pile. “No real chance of that last one.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“You got any plans?”

He can hear her shrug through the phone, putting aside her own issues. “I have a couple ideas. You can fly back here to the states to help me decide on one.”

Jacobi thinks about the options he has, which doesn’t take long. There aren’t that many. “Okay. I’ll fly back.”

“I’ll wait for you,” she promises, and Jacobi wonders if he’ll ever get that promise when he’s not being horribly useful.

He hangs up. He lets the phone fall to the carpet and he stares up at the ceiling. At some point during the conversation, he ended up lying on the bed on his back, although he can’t remember actually moving.

There’s a stain on the ceiling, he notes, though he can’t decide what it looks like. There’s a stain on the ceiling and he has another job. He isn’t going to have to drink himself to death, even if he _is_ going to have to go back and deal with Goddard, and thinking about the close save sends an unexpected jolt of relief.

It’s so unexpected that for a second he just freezes. Daniel Jacobi does not feel relieved at the thought of not dying. It doesn’t happen. Even in the middle of SI-5, when he was the closest to happy that he’s ever gotten, the idea of himself dying was a vaguely comforting fact of life, a promise that he wasn’t going to have to keep going forever, that eventually, he’d stop poisoning the water he rested in. He doesn’t _not want_ to die.

For a second, Jacobi pretends that he just doesn’t want to take a long time at it, slowly drinking until he succumbs to it, but then he remembers that moment in the Unknowing, right before the bombs went off. That moment of weakness looking at Tim. But then, Jacobi thinks savagely, sitting up, pretty guys have always been his weakness. Why should this be any different?

That dose of bitterness gets him moving long enough to shower, finally, and put on a clean set of cloths, but as he’s trying to pack up what little he’s been carrying around, he stalls out again. Starts lingering over every item he tucks away. Then he realizes that the shirt he’s folding it actually Tim’s, and he just stops completely.

He throws himself back on the bed, drops Tim’s shirt on his face. With the light blocked out, he wonders, tiredly, if Tim was able to quit or not, if he got out, and what _he’s _doing with his newfound freedom.

Jacobi go over, sure. Could ask him. But that would be outright cruel, and besides, would be so close to admitting something as to be impossible. He’s already agreed to go be a person with Lovelace, there’s only so much the world can expect of him.

——

Jacobi wakes up sometime later to someone pounding on his door. He’s utterly disoriented, a bad habit that Kepler never did manage to break him of, and for a moment he has no idea where he is and why there’s gravity. He can’t even see, another thing that is heartstoppingly frightening. After a few seconds of lying there, he manages to put together a few things.

First, he’s not blind suddenly, he’s just stupid and left Tim’s shirt on his face.

Second, he absolutely did just fall asleep because he was sad, and how pathetic is that.

Third, that’s Tim’s voice shouting at him from the door.

Jacobi falls off the bed, inelegant and gangly, but efficient. They’ve been fighting critters with a habit of looking like other people, he tells himself, so he has a perfectly good reason for wanting to hide that has nothing to do with being a fucking coward or his stupid feelings.

“Daniel, open the fuck up!” Tim yells.

Although, Jacobi thinks, given what they just blew up, it’s unlikely to be a fake Tim. And if he keeps shouting, he’s going to get them thrown out of the hotel, which a fake probably wouldn’t risk. And also, Jacobi _wants_ to open the door, even if he also wants to hide, even if it’s a fake, because he’s sick of having to follow these new bullshit magic rules. Lovelace is fine, and fuck these mannequins for not being fine, too.

He gets up and opens the door.

Tim is interrupted mid-knock, mouth still open to shout some more. He shuts his mouth, looks Jacobi up and down as if checking him for injury. If that is what he’s doing, Jacobi thinks, he really doesn’t have a lot of experience in it because there are so many places Jacobi could have hidden a wound. And then Jacobi is hit with awareness that he just slept on damp hair and is still holding Tim’s shirt clutched tightly, and stops feeling smug. If he were pretty much anyone else, he’d probably blush awkwardly.

But because he’s Daniel Jacobi, he asks brusquely, “What are you doing here?”

Tim bristles, and Jacobi instantly feels on more solid ground. “What am _I_ doing here? I’m making sure you aren’t bleeding to death! You ran away before we could even all find each other; the only reason I knew you weren’t _dead_ was because we were in the same place when the bombs went off!”

“Yeah, well, job was done,” Jacobi snaps back, “Why should I have stuck around?”

“Well fuck you,” Tim says, and his jaw works, like he wants to continue but has no idea what to say next. Finally, he spits out, “It’s not like I have anything left to do either, and goddammit, were you just going to fuck off without saying goodbye?”

Jacobi blinks, off step. This isn’t his first rodeo, Tim swearing at him, and swearing at him for leaving, is par for the course. It’s the middle part that’s new. “Did you… were you able to quit?” he asks. His tone is suddenly much quieter, almost nice, and Jacobi isn’t sure he recognizes his own voice. He can’t remember the last time he spoke to someone like this.

Tim huffs, annoyed, but seemingly not hearing Jacobi’s tone as anything too weird. Maybe he thinks that Jacobi is like him. Angry, but only temporarily. As if now that this is over, they can both be people. “Yeah, yeah I was. I quit the Archives, and the Circus is gone, and now apparently, you’re leaving for wherever. So I don’t have anything else to do.” He might be grinning at Jacobi, but it’s so bitter that it looks more he’s baring his teeth. It’s pretty much the same expression that got Jacobi so interested in the first place. Tim is going to find, Jacobi thinks, that being people again is not nearly as easy as it looks.

_Oh man_, he thinks. _Lovelace is gonna kill me._ Out loud, he says, “Do you want something to do?”


End file.
